


One Day

by Indybaggins



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: Cheating, Choices, Love, M/M, Unconventional Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-25
Updated: 2006-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indybaggins/pseuds/Indybaggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What one day changed… This story starts at the end of the day and then goes back, piece by piece, to the beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Day

 

 

Colin lay awake, eyes open in the velvet dark, in a bed that smelled of Ryan, somewhere in the lost hours past midnight, feeling Ryan’s arms loosely around him and the slow heaving of his warm chest against his bare back. 

He shivered. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the dark plump shapes of the bags he had packed, just hours ago. He looked at the dark hovering ceiling, and tried to oversee that the day eventually had changed and shattered and moulded into something new altogether. He hesitantly turned around, for a second almost afraid at what he would find, and looked at Ryan sleep, the hazy light of the street filtering through the curtains and colouring the vague smile that played around Ryan’s lips. 

 

\---

 

Colin came home for the last time, to a house wrapped in blue darkness and cold steps that creaked under his bare feet. He stilled when he noticed the pale figure of his wife, carrying a cup of coffee and tear-stained eyes, standing somewhere near the end of the hallway. He smiled a little as he moved forward and awkwardly held her in a hug goodbye, tracing two fingers over her familiar back and the soft fabric of her nightgown. He tried to keep that smile as her cold hands pushed his arms away and she whispered, looking at the floor, “Don’t even think you can be grateful.” 

 

\---

 

The white hotel bed and the bleak room silent, the tension chased away to be replaced by a solemn and familiar ache for now, Colin shyly looked at his hands fumbling with the sheet and told him. 

He could see that Ryan was touched, almost, doubt still tainting his eyes. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah,” Colin said, planting a soft kiss in his hair, and amazed at the ease at which the words left his mouth. “I am.” 

Ryan held onto him then, and they let the silence settle in and dance between them to create a future they had been too afraid of to imagine before. 

 

\---

 

Colin opened the hotel door with a fleeting secret in his eyes, to a silent Ryan and an expectant tension already in the air and bed. 

Ryan didn’t meet his eyes, he rarely did anymore. He had once, when he still had hope that this was real, that Colin would come and stay. After years though, hope had become nothing more than a sorely familiar routine, every time they met another snapshot of hurt and could-have-beens for the collection of secrets that lingered between them. 

Colin’s secret had to wait, because before he knew it he was pinned against the wall, and against silent desperation and years of building tension and secret hurt without resolve. He submitted to Ryan’s violent kiss, his back pressed against the wall and Ryan’s hands already undressing him; he always did, and yet the familiar words ran through his mind too, “I wish it was real.” 

Only now he dared to assume it was.

 

\---

 

Colin checked his watch while riding the elevator, his other hand unconsciously rubbing the mark where she had hit him. He wondered if it showed. He was going to be late. Ryan never minded. 

 

\---

 

He left, almost as a thief, sneaking away from his own house in midday. 

She caught him; she hovered in the doorway like a hurt butterfly while he walked towards the car, grey gravel creaking under his soles, and something in her eyes told him it would be all right. He nodded and suddenly remembered why he had once loved her frailness, the fondness showing in his eyes and his attempt to say something. 

She shyly told him “Go’, and he felt as if he was betraying her for the very first time… but did so anyway. 

 

\---

 

He forgot what he had meant to do, and silently walked down to trap her in an embrace in the middle of the kitchen and tell her the words that had been locked away in his mind before she had ever been. 

“I’m in love with him.” 

She held on to the kitchen counter, hands shaking, and asked too many questions he didn’t have the answer to. He said he would leave her for him, and she hit him, hard, before she stormed away. 

He, automatically, started cleaning the kitchen table. 

 

\---

 

He was in the upstairs bathroom, planning to shower, and his hands stilled when he felt his wallet in an old pair of jeans. He opened it and stared at the picture of Ryan inside. It was old and worn to pieces. His hands started shaking. 

He realised it was going to be today, today or never. 

 

\---

 

It was morning, just another slightly sunny day. With nothing to do but wait until he could trace his fingers over Ryan’s face, and map every curve and line so he could remember each excruciating detail when he was alone again. 

He blinked a couple times. 

He felt as if he was screaming inside, while (not) reading the paper and holding a coffee cup at breakfast. She looked at him from across the table with eyes that seemed to know but didn’t really, and he wondered if he would ever stop feeling guilty. 

 

\---

 

He woke up holding her and immediately wishing it was him.

 

 

 

 


End file.
